As Congress adjourned for its summer time recess, freshman Rep. Barbara Comstock was rising as one in every of its most vigorous opponents of the proposed Iran nuclear deal.

I hear from individuals always and they’re speaking about this, stated the Virginia Republican, whose commute again to her Northern Virginia district is a 20- to 30-minute drive and thus she is uncovered to opinions of constituents each day.

In an interview with Newsmax days earlier than the recess started, Comstock stated she listens to the more and more vocal opinions of constituents on the Iran settlement, and they’re coming from extra locales than her city conferences or speeches at Rotary luncheons.

They’re frightened that it doesn’t matter what the Tehran regime guarantees, we will get a nuclear Iran, she informed us. After which we will not get the genie again within the bottle, it doesn’t matter what the administration says.

The freshman congresswoman added that her Iranian constituents categorical their perception to me, time and again, that their nation was hijacked by the Islamic revolution. There’s a broad consensus of their group that we should always improve the sanctions on Iran relatively than take them again.

Regardless of the strain the administration is placing on Democratic lawmakers to OK the deal, stated Comstock, their spokesmen, resembling [Secretary of State] John Kerry, are simply not making a compelling argument.

Together with listening to her constituents on this more and more incendiary matter, Comstock plans to make her first journey to Israel, the place she expects to satisfy with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. She stated: That is somebody who is aware of methods to make a compelling argument no deal is best than a nasty one.

When Congress returns to work after Labor Day, Comstock solely the third Republican Home member from the Previous Dominion State who’s a lady is more likely to be a front-and-center voice towards Home approval of the controversial Iran deal. However taking over controversial points is one thing she has spent a superb a part of her grownup life doing.

Barbara Comstock Labored for Ted Kennedy

Politics, it appears, has been in Barbara Burns Comstock’s blood. A graduate of Middlebury School in Vermont and Georgetown College Regulation Faculty, she settled in Northern Virginia, married and have become a mom of three.

When she moved to Virginia, Comstock met and volunteered for Republican Rep. Frank Wolf and later joined his employees on Capitol Hill.

Comstock first appeared on the conservative radar display within the 1990s when, as senior counsel to the Home Committee on Authorities Reform, she was within the forefront of the probe into the early scandals surrounding Invoice and Hillary Clinton. The Arkansas land deal referred to as Whitewater was a specific focus of the panel and of Comstock.

In 2000, she oversaw opposition analysis for George W. Bushs presidential marketing campaign and was later director of public affairs on the US Division of Justice underneath Lawyer Common John Ashcroft. Comstock ultimately launched her personal enterprise and was a key strategist within the 2012 presidential marketing campaign of Mitt Romney.

However the Massachusetts native truly served in regulation faculty as an intern on the employees of her state’s Sen. Ted Kennedy.

All of us have to start out someplace, she stated.

On the time, Comstock was a Democrat who got here from a Democratic household in Massachusetts. However whereas working for Kennedy, she realized her values and views weren’t Democratic in any respect and she or he quickly turned a Republican.

With the respect Comstock gained amongst fellow conservatives and her more and more seen position as a spokeswoman for conservative causes, it was solely pure that she would make a run for workplace herself.

That got here in 2009, when she first gained election to the Virginia Home of Delegates by unseating Democratic incumbent Margaret Vanderhye.

In 2014, when mentor and good friend Wolf introduced his retirement from Congress after 34 years, Delegate Comstock loomed giant because the Republican inheritor obvious. However she needed to work for the seat.

First, she topped a six-candidate GOP main subject with 54 % of the vote. Sensing a potential pickup of a Home seat, nationwide Democrats promoted Fairfax County Supervisor John Foust, and cash from organized labor and environmental activists flowed into his coffers.

Foust, whose commercials slammed Comstock for her pro-life views, made a tactical blunder within the fall when his marketing campaign charged that the Republican nominee by no means had an actual job.

In a district the place Comstock’s expertise just isn’t unusual amongst ladies who work in authorities and politics whereas elevating a household, the Democrat clearly stumbled.

However that is not why I gained, stated Comstock, who rolled up 56 % of the vote final fall. I knocked on 10,000 doorways and all the time talked about jobs and the financial system and the shortage of an actual restoration that we’re experiencing. The agenda of decrease taxes and tax reform resonated with individuals right here.

And again and again, I heard from individuals who had actual horror tales about coping with Obamacare. An auto mechanic in Leesburg informed me that he needed to pay $900 a month for medical insurance beneath new laws and stated, ‘that is my lease.’

The GOP lawmaker requires repealing Obamacare each means we will eliminating the Medical System Tax, for instance. Sure, it should take a Republican president to signal repeal, however till then anybody I can rescue from Obamacare, I’ll.

As chairman of the Science, Area, and Know-how Subcommittee on Analysis and Know-how, Comstock is worried with concepts and alternatives for the roles of the 21st century. The important thing to the longer term, she says, is tips on how to use know-how and personal funding for tomorrow.

Inevitably, she is requested about what the press calls ladies’s points.

I strategy all points as ladies’s points, Comstock stated. Know-how, medical reform, and entrepreneurship are all ladies’s points.

You are all the time greatest off if you ask ladies their prime considerations. And the highest points I hear from ladies are jobs and alternative, healthcare, and more and more, nationwide safety. We’ve some robust ladies speaking, and I want to be their voice.

John Gizzi is chief political columnist and White Home correspondent for Newsmax.

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